Noun And Adjective

I am the noun

You are the adjective

both are unrelated in substance

the noun changes-

shape, size, colour and meaning

the adjective follows it

chameleon like with

focal adjustments to catch

the form and spirit.

But can it ever?

 

The morning dew drops

give a pearly shape to the flowers

but when the sun touches mid point

the petals dry up

the adjectives change

their epithets wobble.

 

When the flower droops

in drowsy stupor

the adjective darkens

the petals close 

in the fading hour

a noun is lost

the adjective is lost too.

 

Sabita Sahu

The Show Must Go On

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

We make all simple things complex for the human mind loves to play adverse, reverse and inverse games with life to make it vast, inscrutable and challenging. Man loves to fill his moments with loads of reality. If time according to John Barrow is God's device of  stopping all things to happen at a time, it is man's desire to enjoy / suffer all things at a moment.  Man makes things to happen following Nature. In nature everything moves, mutates, rotates dissipates and revives. Beckett's bald tree in Waiting for Godot oozes in the second Act; the possibility of regreening is immense. Santiago in his after failure reverie sees lions, pillows of death bed patients vibrate and things move on. If you ask why, the answer is the "sky is very very high" - which in childhood jocularity was quite a happy resolution to all incomprehensions. Man is a questioning animal. He never stops at anything. Never is content with any finality, be it death, a catastrophe or even Apocalypse. Look at the Pandemic Covid 19 which China gleefully exported and see how in Wuhan, the city of its origin, people gathered at a poolside in very large numbers, around 50k+ and cavorted in drunken orgy! Well, the show must go on - a cliche but so what!

 

In the history of the world, does not matter whether before or after a sense of history dawned on man, at no time man surrendered to the enforced revelations of anti-life. He fought his way to survive. The dinosaur failed and many other named and unnamed species failed but man has survived and has grown to be at 7.6 billion. The plague came and went, many other seen -unseen anti-life forces have come and gone: And now this Coronavirus! Well if China could celebrate the end of corona with unmasked joy why can't we? So many vaccine candidates are now competing for the Nobel, India too has her own Covaxin and three others. We will conquer. Why try to stop the process of life? Why try to stop all examinations?  It seems now there is a competition in India for the most defeatist coward prize which no one will award. But all states, political parties in the opposition and the examinees in India have raised their despairing hands in surrender to the forces against which they fight day and night.

 

The JEE and NEET tests will be held in September. The government of India mandated by the Supreme Court have announced the dates. Admit cards have been already received by 85 percent of candidates. But a clamour goes on for postponement. Appeals to the Prime Minister and Organizations concerned have been made by state governments and student bodies. Some motivated groups have started agitations: Why? Why try to stop the process? Why not brave the crisis and try to overcome the unforeseen impediment by driving into a new future? If University degree should be awarded without tests would the students be employable? If JEE and NEET should be postponed should the aspirants lose one year without batting an eyelid? If the present state of Covid and flood ravaged India is dangerous for a three hour examination what shall we do if the situation (god forbid) worsens? Why don't the opposition parties stay away from the sane judgement of the Supreme Court? And why do some people for their obscure intentions wish to stop the clock? Time will move even if the clock stops and those who do not move with time will be stuck at a moment of regret. Yes, the situation is bad but if the exams and tests are postponed or circumnavigated by political motivations the future may reveal our cowardice in more trying manners.

 

Crisis always brings out the bravest elements even in the most retarded minds. The indecisive people who fall prey to weak minded advice may not survive any calamity. And in such cases the decision ought to be of the individual. Why should a few weak willed candidates block the road for the heroic ones? Gresham's Law has no relevance in such cases. The bold must be allowed to move on. Life is short, losing one year in these times of uncertainty is unmanly. The pandemic has already taken its toll on human self belief. Unwanted cynicism and despair have already made many a young head heavy. If we willfully put more bricks on the walls of uncertainty the strength to jump over may suffer a time lag.

 

Man lives for his tomorrow working, dreaming, planning to better his 'today' which each tomorrow brings. If that today is wasted by yesterday's memories, life becomes memoryless, a gap in time without connectivity. My today is a preparation for tomorrow, if I postpone my tomorrow for a future date my personal history is holesome, not wholesome. We must remember- the Hero is one who willingly suffers the unslaughts of time and creates his opportunities out of the crisis which is not of his own making. But a man who does not have a heroic temper and never seizes the string before the murmur stops is a mere bystander. What the Supreme Court has decided is not a political decision. The SC has decided for the future of India, for the future youth of India. Those who by their unheroic temper display a fear of the morrow, should remember that they are setting wrong examples of Indian youth behaviour. Life must go forward. If some stumble and fall, so be it. For a few fearful persons the bold should not be sacrificed. Fare forward traveller- charaibati...

Happiness Is Not For Man

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

 

Pleasure and Pain, they say, are agreeable and disagreeable chemical reactions in the body. Ok. Let me dismiss them as aberrations of the system, a manufacturing defect deliberately left unattended by the Maker. What is happiness then?  A lingering sentiment where all wants, desires, aspirations, dreams are in a state of animated suspension? A happy man is ... what? Is he contented, desireless and therefore in a static state? I really do not know, for, in my childhood I read - Are you a pig satisfied or an Aristotle dissatisfied? I know I am not a pig. I am naturally dissatisfied with everything. The more I read, the more I discover my ignorance. My knowledge does not help me in fixing a blade in my Mac Fusion, I request others to do it for me, The more I see the state of the world, not only in 2020 but in all my years of silent encounters with reality I was never elated. A few scientific inventions, however, have made my senses wild in hope for happiness but I never saw or felt any static glow bringing cheer to all human faces. Happiness, I view as human happiness, not the personal happiness of a prophet or thinker or a political strategist who mesmerizes a large number of people to follow him. Private, personal frustration often makes a man devise a philosophy, a so called salvation path or an ideology which promises happiness. The people who followed Asharam or Ram Rahim or the Buddha or Shankar or any breathing creature, never lived their own lives. We follow an ideology or cult figure because we have no mind of our own to find happiness on our own. We always wait for a Messiah.  We always wait for Godot.

 

If happiness is really a worriless, healthy, prosperous, free, well loved, sexually satisfied, well respected and honoured state in a human being, it is available only in poetic imagination, in some gem studded Orb of infinity in which a person listens to the alaaps of Tansen at dawn, the Beethoven Jupiter Symphony while watching swimming nymphs being painted by  Botticelli in a moonlit night.  Such things make happy reading, not happy reality.  The human mind, we must remind ourselves is never happy, not meant to be happy as ideas, thoughts move in time defying logic in the mind.  But the fact is that the human grain cannot tolerate reality; if it is unchanged he is bored, if it changes rapidly he gets wild. Man is intellectually radicalised against his own civilizational values and the structures of his own making.

If man ever wanted to be happy, the present times are the best in the last about one million year old history of man. Food, house and medicines are available to more than 95 % of humans, although the availability is not equitable. But hunger-death, sickness - death have come down.  More farmers in India die committing suicide than due to starvation and disease. Wars of the mass destruction kind are almost gone. More people die of plane crashes and road accidents than by organised warfare. Yes, the argument will be based on Covid-19; the world has not yet found a vaccine and this coronavirus has changed the cultural patterns of society.  But by the year end more than three vaccines will be available and return to the old normal may become quite possible. But what is the old normal? Eat well, work hard, earn more, drink more and think of destroying India, China or some other country. Pakistan will stake her hunger against hate for India; the LOC and borders will always be hot. China would plot against America, India and other democracies; the latest being opium trade, getting supplies from Afgan Taliban. Despite all these deprivations of the human material the present period could keep a man happy in the post- covid decades. But who wants to be a good human being and live in peace with neighbours and fellow men?

 

The institutions built by civilizational values like Parliamentary Democracy, Supreme Court, Civic liberties, free speech and similar ennobling institutions do not keep people away from fakery, hate and violence. One argumentative thesis by way of explanation of the present and continuing danger facing modern man has come from Samual P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. The western values and the values of the Muslim world are almost always in a combative stage. And this clash both kinetic and simmeringly potential has kept mankind on edge. The Muslim world refuses to accept the modern education, work culture and institutions of free expression of ideas or individualistic lifestyle. Hence anger is nursed by groups of human kind who do not wish to be content. Nothing pleases them. They wallow in anxiety, uncertainty, fear and anger.

 

 Man creates order, harmony, balance and calls them classical values but romanticizes violence and justifies anger. In short, man enjoys polluting the earth, poisoning the air, killing other humans, hating his own breed- species and blowing up all bridges to human heart. If Cain killed his brother and raped his mother and ruined the future of  God's prized creation, why blame the inheritors for their transgressive shenanigans? Man never wants peace or happiness, in fact, he hates peace. A calm evening of human togetherness picks on his nerves. He breaks the calm of the head, bowing before some God at day break. Chaodelights him, cacophony excites him anatd love makes him a rapist. He will not change come Covid come Plague. Long live Man!

Deathless Life

Death is the only guarantee

to  life's intensity

love ennobles life to conquer death.

When heaven  sinks to hell

hell rises to meet the earth

and the three kingdoms of God

merge into a paradise of love.

 

When love feeds the needs

the atmosphere resonates

the rhythms of nature fill

the new  world with vibrant music,

the cosmic dance begins

eyes sparkle stars wink in joy

the earth holds the sky canopy

over the blooming petals of love.

 

Come what may, thunder or pestilence

all heartless and Aspic stings

we will not shrink in fear

nor shall we quake in dread:

For we are now love decorated

immortals of God's Hall of glory.

 

Our love dance, our agile bodies

Hand, leg, eyes, and heartbeats

will make our cosmic dance, a celebration

Heaven- hell, earth in unison

the most sombre coronation

of Love's Victory where God

would join our chorus of life eternal.

Sabita Sahu

 

Underlining

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I never prefer old books although they are available on the roadside pavements in big cities plentifully and at throw away prices. A brand new book, press fresh excites me like an oven fresh chicken leg. Holding such a book in my hand gives me sensuous joy. A new book has a smell like the scent of the earth on a monsoon breaking shower at dawn. Its touch enlivens me like a flower shivering under the humming bee. My eyes feast on the tome as though I am savouring grace. No, no exaggeration. Any new book thrills me even today. I place it against my heart and feel my beats, keeping time on the timeless Intellectual possibilities. When I start reading I begin from the first letter. If the book is dull, uninspiring and pedantic I don't throw it away. At least an author has spent countless hours to write it, has poured his/her convictions, however, mistaken and ill-conceived on midnight pages. The book may not be chewable or digestible yet it is a product of a mind however dull or stubborn. I respect an author's ego, if not his egoistic outpourings; I turn the pages with languorous resignation and keep it aside. If a book catches my fancy I enter the writer's mind and try to reconstruct it in my mind. But when I am with Shakespeare or Vyasa or Tolstoy I weigh each word, each phrase on the balance of Vasuki's hood.

I never put any mark or even a dot on a book lest I interfere or intrude upon a great mind's aesthetic architecture. I read, re-read a good book and try to gauge the expanse of a mind, the vision of a  genius. If the book withstands my probing questions and counter narratives, I touch my forehead with the book and reverentially place the book on the shelf. I never underline any sentence or stanza. Nor put lines on the margin. Except my signature on the title page I never put any mark anywhere. In fact, I never hold a pen/pencil while reading a book, nor do I take notes.

 

One day my Professor (BKT), my research supervisor saw some of the books on my study table and with a smirk said: These books are for show or what? Have you read these books? There is not a single line anywhere? I was not embarrassed. I said,  when I read a book I never underline any passage. If there are purple patches, I remember.  I trust my memory. BKT said, that's fine,  you do not want to disfigure a book but when you do research these marked passages come handy.  And I know you never take notes... I didn't argue. I said, I will underline things hereafter. BKT was a very perceptive intellectual but very meticulous, orderly and disciplined. When my thesis was submitted he warned me: Since you have not quoted and challenged any critic, the evaluators may think you have not read any secondary source materials. But the foreign scholars are hopefully, objective. They will certainly appreciate originality. I mused Amen.

Thereafter I made it a point to sit with a pen whenever I began reading a book. And also underlined certain portions which appealed to me or struck me as original. This habit continued till my 60th year after which I made this habit occasional. I marked only those portions which I may refer to in future. Today  I turned the pages of Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground and was at a passage which I had underlined, God knows when. The lines are,

"And what, pray, does civilization soften in us? All civilization does, is to develop in man the many sidedness of his sensations, and nothing absolutely nothing more. And through the development  of his many sidedness man, for all we know, may reach the stage when he will find pleasure in bloodshed."(sec vii)

To be honest I was surprised at the prophetic grandeur of the sentence. But I was also disturbed at the assertion that civilization has not taught us to soften in us the aggressive rebelliousness which causes bloodshed. Dostoevsky agrees that civilization opens up the many sidedness of the human beings. All emotions, passions, intellectual pursuits find a free atmosphere to be at full play. But will the post Enlightenment thinkers agree with him? Does civilization open up all sides - and here too scholars do not see eye to eye on many contours. If liberalism, democracy, globalization and secularism are true civilizational values why do thinkers like Justine  E. Smith (Irrationality) challenge Pinker and others? Bill Gates may accept the professed values of civilization but Trump does not - why? Xi Jinping does not believe in any nuances of civilization, except global domination. The true successor of Mao Zedong believes in a  profession of lies, deceit and hypocrisy, for  XI's or the CPC's brand of political faith has brought the 2020 world to the brink of disaster. What are the many sides which civilization opens up? Fellow feeling, togetherness, faith in the rule of law or bigotry and Jihad, honour killing or something else like - Every death diminishes me?   There is no unanimity in anything. What Nial Ferguson calls Civilization Harari may not accept and what Harari accepts as Civilization Sashi Tharoor may not concur in. How many sides do the humans have? Perhaps legion. But man has always enjoyed the Romance of Bloodshed. Staking his mortality he wills immortality by his sword. Dostoevsky perhaps saw more of gore than the well rounded human spirit making the world a concord of all tunes. And in the now world we see the truth of Dostoevsky's prophetic musings.

 

I was delighted that I had underlined something which is perceptually universal. I could see that line, faded and smudged, as I ran through the book. Yes, underlining is good although one part of my spirit still believes that a book's appeal should be virginal. But I will make the compromise, I will underline, sideline with coloured pencils and make the pages more colourful than those could be.

The Half Sphere

The half-moon peeped through

my window grill at midnight,

the midwinter chill

pinpricked my pores,

I opened my hair and 

went to the terrace

without any woolens,

everything was half at the moment,

my half-lived life

my studies not been full

even my dreams half-buried under

the half formed snow.

 

But the fullness of my being

is ready for  full encounter

my pride is full

my desires are full

full is my body and mind,

the sky above is always full

my efforts, however, are not so.

 

When my love whispers from afar

with full-throated glee

half-joking, half-serious:

Should everything be half,

I said no, the half will be double

come let's make the world full together

no belly will be half full

no sleep shall be marred

by half dreams broken into doom

The hemispheres are we

we will join the spheres and

 make the earth fulfil herself.

Sabita Sahu

Moony Memories

Another day of excitement

I stood against the towering

roaring  waves, to see the

divine love of moon and sea,

soft and slow was the breeze

everything was in its motion

to witness the unique union.

 

All decked up like Venus

bright and beautiful,

the moon peeped out

tearing  the clouds

to fall on the body of the sea

to be swayed by the waves

and enjoy the glides.

 

The sea caressed her

with every unfolding wave

and with every rise she came up

with a splendid smile to end the battle

to lose and merge with him.

 

Suddenly the memories arose

love stirred in my heart

creating typhoons in 

my silent thoughts

fanning my thirsty emotions

to carry the flight.

 

If I have self insulated myself,

love me like the raging sea

ready I am to  dance with

the waves  and can make no

mistake to live a life

I desire to live.

Sabita Sahu